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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Charles Stansfeld Jones
New York.
Dec 23rd 1914.
Care Frater,
I am more than pleased at your letter just received with ritual encloses. It is very fine. Mr. White is to be congratulated heartily; no criticism seems needed.
I hope you will arrange to repeat this all the time, say every new moon or every full moon so as to build up a regular force. You should also have a solar ritual to balance it, to be done each time the Sun enters a new sign, with special festivity at the Equinoxes and solstices.
In this way you can establish a regular cult; and if you do them in a truly magical manner, you create a vortex of force which will suck in all the people you want.
The time is ripe for a natural religion. People like rites and ceremonies, and they are tired of hypothetical gods.
Insist on the real benefits of the Sun, the Mother-force, the Father-force, and so on; and show that by celebrating those benefits worthily the worshippers unite themselves more fully with the current of life. Let the religion be Joy, with but a worthy and dignified sorrow in death itself; and treat death as an ordeal, an initiation. Do not gloss over facts, but transmute them in the Athanor of your ecstacy.
In short, be the founder of a new and greater Pagan cult in the beautiful land which you have made your home. As you go on you can add new festivals of corn and wine, and all things useful and noble and inspiring.
I still hope largely that you will find it possible to come over here during next month.
With fraternal greetings,
Yours,
Perdurabo.
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